Hello,
This may be a slightly rambling and inexpert question from
point of view of the learned folks on this list - feel free
to go and read something more interesting, but I am curious
and a little alarmed about a recent event.
I am running Linux from Scratch ("LFS"), under a locally
compiled Kernel 2.4.20 (SMP).  The root filsytem was created
as ext2 and converted to ext3 with an external journal about
9 months ago.  I have ext2fsprogs v.1.33.
Everything has worked perfectly so far, and ext3 has
recovered succesfully from several unauthorised shut-downs. 
I confess that I had given up doing fscks.
Last night I had a system lock-up (graphics card issue I
think), and had to hit the reset.  I noticed that on reboot
(which was successful), I did not see the usual "errors were
found and fixed ... " warning.  I thought I would do a fsck
just to check that all was well.  I ran e2fsck from my old
SuSE 7.0 rescue disk on the unmounted filesystem.  This
produced the "bad superblock / not a valid ext2 filsystem" 
warning.  I rebooted successfully into LFS and then I shut
down "-r -F" to force a check.  The fsck ran and at about
95% complete I got a big red "errors have been found which
cannot be fixed" warning and the system halted "pending
manual intervention" (fat chance).  I rebooted and the
system came up just fine.  I hit the reset button.  This
time I did see the "errors were found and fixed ... "
message. I shut down again "-r -F".  This time the fsck
completed without problems. So, I seem to be back to normal.
Can anyone explain what was going on?
Should I be worried?
TIA
Geoff
On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 07:47:13AM +0100, Geoff wrote:> Last night I had a system lock-up (graphics card issue I > think), and had to hit the reset. I noticed that on reboot > (which was successful), I did not see the usual "errors were > found and fixed ... " warning. I thought I would do a fsck > just to check that all was well. I ran e2fsck from my old > SuSE 7.0 rescue disk on the unmounted filesystem. This > produced the "bad superblock / not a valid ext2 filsystem" > warning. I rebooted successfully into LFS and then I shut > down "-r -F" to force a check. The fsck ran and at about > 95% complete I got a big red "errors have been found which > cannot be fixed" warning and the system halted "pending > manual intervention" (fat chance). I rebooted and the > system came up just fine. I hit the reset button. This > time I did see the "errors were found and fixed ... " > message. I shut down again "-r -F". This time the fsck > completed without problems. So, I seem to be back to normal.If your description of the events were accurate, the only thing that can explain it is hardware error, or user error (i.e. you accidentally specified the wrong device somewhere along the line). Without more detalis about specifically what error messages were displayed by fsck, it's really hard to say much more, unfortunately. - Ted